discovering cool things. and the stories they tell.

Category: Photographs and Ephemera

It’s rare to find an intact antique atlas. Many atlases are cut up and sold to collectors as individual maps. Even when you find a atlas that hasn’t been chopped up, it’s very difficult to track down the provenance and original owner of a 200-year-old book. But we were up for the challenge!

Every book-collector dreams of finding a rare first-edition jumbled in with tattered paperbacks and dusty old text books. Before we even opened this beautiful gift book, we knew it was special. It might not be worth thousands of dollars, but it is indeed a first edition. And the story we discovered is perhaps more valuable than the book itself.

We fell in love with this vintage photograph of a beautiful ventriloquist performing in a fabulous formal dress with her dummy. We knew we had to give this photo a home. And find out the story behind the image.